Bahr v. Lombard

• Decision Date: 30 November 1890
• Citation: 53 N.J.L. 233,23 A. 167
• Parties: BAHR v. LOMBARD et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

23 A. 167

53 N.J.L. 233

BAHR

v. LOMBARD et al.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Nov. Term, 1890.

BEASLEY, C. J., (dissenting.)

In my opinion there was a prima facie case made when this nonsuit was ordered. The plaintiff was the only witness testifying to the circumstances embracing the accident. His narration was a brief one. He said he worked for the defendants in a building that was called a "tail-house," his function being to weigh the oil that came there through certain pipes. These are his words with respect to the accident: "When I went into the tail house I had a thermometer with me, and just as I was going to put it down there was a terrible explosion, like the report of a gun, and threw me out of the tail-house, and the cap from my head, and my hair and my beard and everything was burnt away. I ran out. In my great fear, and the fire came flowing out of the building." With regard to the cause of the occurrence, he says it was occasioned by the bursting of a pipe. On cross-examination he was asked the question "These pipes frequently get to leaking, don't they?" and he answered, "They don't leak very often, but sometimes." He further testified "We have always gas in the tail-house" His further statement was that he saw some of his fellow-workmen near the point of accident, but did not know what they were doing. This is all the evidence having any pertinence whatever. Under this condition of facts, I think the matter ought to have gone to the jury. The business was a dangerous one, unless carefully conducted. The defendants were bound to furnish, so far as possible, machinery and instruments appertaining to such business of approved strength and quality. So it was incumbent on them to see that they were kept in that degree of repair that would result from the highest degree of care and attention. It is not to be lightly inferred that instruments of the kind thus specified, and which had been thus supervised, would, in the absence of all known special cause, give way and burst under the ordinary pressure to which, in the course of business, they would be subjected, and consequently the bursting of this pipe, under such circumstances, would reasonably lead in the direction of a conclusion that it was in an imperfect condition. It is true that such conclusion would not of itself render the defendants liable; for such disruption of the pipe might have proceeded from a defect altogether inscrutable, upon the most careful examination. ...